hen my hapa haole grandmother found out Johnny Crystobal had a car, she phoned and offered him twenty dollars and a five-pound bonefish if he'd drive out to Hadulco Ranch on the west end of Moloka'i to pick up two hundred pounds of chicken manure. She'd have probably gone herself but she was busy supervising Valdez in the pasture. Valdez was busy digging holes for palm trees that had outgrown their plastic buckets. Johnny said he had a bad back so Gramma told him she'd provide a helper.

"'O'io fresh?" Johnny asked her.

"Caught this mornin'."

Johnny agreed to go.

My big brother Ben was hiking Hale Kia Mountain so Gramma said, "Get in

the Scout, Peanut."

I climbed inside the truck’s cab. “Peanut” wasn’t my real name but Gramma called me that because of my size. She handed me the 'o'io wrapped in foil. "Give this ta Johnny," she said. She fired up the engine, threw it in first, and we were off. She was wearing her usual ranch attire—cowboy boots, denims, a palaka shirt, and a lauhala hat with a wide brim. When we reached the public road, Gramma turned left and headed west toward Kaunakakai. The smell of fish overwhelmed me so I took the 'o'io off my lap and placed it on the steel floor. We sped past Pukoo Fishpond. I stuck my head out the open window and could smell the sweet mangoes as we skirted Mapulehu Mango Plantation. Then we passed Father Damien's Church and Ah Ping's Grocer. Gramma had a determined look that tightened up her face. She looked haole but her eyes slanted. She spoke a type of creole common on Moloka’i, a southern-like dialect interspersed with Hawaiian words. She told me to wave at all the cars and trucks heading in the opposite direction because I'd be a kua'aina if I ignored them. I waved at everyone, including a man riding a bike. Gramma had taken me and Ben every summer since I was four because my Irish mother claimed we gave her high blood pressure in Honolulu when we weren’t in school. Just beyond Lili'uokalani Elementary, Gramma veered off the highway and took a dirt road into a kiawe forest. There was a clearing with a house and a big lawn with lime trees but Gramma parked in the forest.

"Why you stopping here?" I asked.

"This's whea Johnny lives."

"In the kiawe?"

She got out and slammed the door. "Bring the 'o'io, Peanut."

I grabbed the fish and followed her through the forest. Yellow seed pods and leaves that looked like green and brown confetti covered the ground. There was the smell of something rotting. We passed a screen box hanging off one of the tree. An octopus was drying inside the box and the legs looked like red licorice. Blue flies crawled the screen.

A root beer-colored Valiant was parked next to a shack. The car was practically a convertible because rust had eaten huge holes in the roof. The rust was the same color as the paint. Springs poked through the bench seats.

"Hui," Gramma called. "Oh, Johnny!"

Johnny appeared at the entrance of the shack. He wore swim trunks, a

white undershirt and brown socks.

"Brought yo' helpa," Gramma said.

Johnny looked at his Timex. "Early."

"Betta early than late," Gramma replied.

Johnny dragged one hand through his hair and invited us in. Gramma said she had to get home; she handed Johnny a ten dollar bill and promised another when he delivered the manure. She gave him a paper with directions. "No forget," Gramma said, "two hundred pounds."

"How Valdez?" Johnny asked her.

"Slow as molasses."

He laughed and I saw gold flash in his teeth. Johnny and Valdez didn't have families because of the shortage of women on Moloka'i. They had come from the Philippines to work the pineapple fields on the west end. After thirty years of bending their backs in the fields, a young luna decided they weren't keeping up. Del Monte gave them each a month of severance pay and evicted them from the plantation barracks in Kualapuu. They couldn't return to the Philippines because they'd lost touch with their families, so they ended up trying to find pick-and-shovel jobs for ranchers on the east end. Gramma gave them my father's old clothes and it was strange seeing them walk around proudly in frazzled hand-me-downs.

I extended the foil-wrapped fish to Johnny. "Here's your 'o'io."

Johnny took it and motioned for me to come inside.

"Manua's already paid fo'," Gramma said. She hustled over to the Scout and I heard her backing out of the forest.

I entered the shack. It was built around the trunk of a giant kiawe tree. The roof was heavy canvas draped over branches. The trunk served as one corner and the shack's cardboard walls leaned in the direction of the tree. The floor was mismatched carpet and strips of linoleum caked with mud. There was a Sterno stove and bottles of hot sauce, ketchup and salad dressing on a shelf nailed to the tree. A pair of horse flies mated in mid-air and I saw a jar of pickled pig's feet on a folding chair next to the stove. There was no electricity and no running water.

"Don't you have a refrigerator?" I asked him.

"No need."

"Where's your phone?"

Johnny pointed toward the place I'd seen in the clearing. "Big house."

He opened a bottle and splashed Vitalis on his palm. He rubbed his hands in his black hair. "Like?" he asked, offering me the bottle. His hair was wet and shiny.

"No, thanks."

"Catch plenny wahine," he promised.

There was a gold cross on a swimmer's chain around his neck. He put on a shirt with a hula girl print and gazed into a small oval mirror taped to the tree. He slicked back his hair with a black pocket comb. "Look good fo' wahine," he explained. He pulled on a pair of blue polyester pants that had once belonged to my father; Johnny had cuffed the bottoms to make them fit. His face was dark and covered with moles. Even though he looked young, I guessed him to be near Gramma's age. He'd come from Manila because a Del Monte flyer promised ten dollars a day and free lodging; "lodging" meant sleeping on a bamboo mat in a room with ten other men and no running water. He'd saved his money and paid for the passage of a picture bride from Quezon City—she married one of the men he roomed with and moved to Lanai.

There were two stacks of magazines under the tree in Johnny's shack. One was religious and the other was Penthouse. Johnny had removed some of the covers and was using them to patch holes in his walls—one patch featured a naked woman riding a bicycle. Plastered next to her was Awake! magazine with a story about rich people going to Hell. When it was time to go, I climbed into the passenger seat of the Valiant. Seed pods and confetti leaves had fallen through the holes onto the dash, so I swept them up and tossed them out the window. Johnny got in and placed the 'o'io on the dash. We drove over to the house in the clearing.

"Wait," Johnny said. He got out with the fish and knocked on the front door while the car belched out clouds of black smoke. He held the foil-wrapped 'o'io like it was an aluminum bouquet. A woman half his age came to the door. She wore a red miniskirt and a white tube top. She began cursing and making violent gestures. I'd seen her at Father Damien's Church a few times with different men. The engine shook like it was going to die but then smoothed out. Johnny gave her the 'o'io but she kept cursing so he walked back to the car. When she saw me she stopped cursing and held the fish with both hands.

"Is that your girlfriend?" I asked when Johnny climbed back in.

"We try make baby," he said.

As we took the driveway out, the woman dropped the 'o'io and ran off the porch. She pulled limes off one of the trees and chased after us.

"Ready or not," I said, "here she comes."

Johnny looked in his rear view mirror. "Ai—ya."

She threw limes as she ran. One of the limes bounced off the hood. Johnny accelerated but the woman ran faster. Our front tires rolled over a root and the car jerked like a carnival ride. A second lime grazed the Valiant's roof. She kept chasing and screaming even after she'd run out of limes and ran until her breasts popped out of her tube top.

"Pupule wahine," Johnny said.

We turned right onto the highway and headed west for Kaunakakai. The car squealed around turns and the wind whistled through the roof. I smelled the Vitalis. Johnny told me he'd won the Valiant on a bet at a cock fight in the back roads of Kaunakakai. I asked him about the woman and he said they'd met when he rented the Big Room in her house. Now a younger man with "plenny kala" was renting that room. The shack was on her property and she let Johnny live there as long as he gave her money. She was mad because he was three months behind.

"How much a month?" I asked.

"Forty," Johnny said.

"And 'o'io," I added.

Johnny adjusted the rear-view mirror and smiled.

The Valiant had an AM radio and Johnny let me spin the dial. A Honolulu station came in strong before Kamalo Ranch then faded. When we got past the Seven Sisters Mountains we hit a flat stretch where the highway cut through the marshes and you could smell the water. The signal from Maui was good so we listened to Tom Jones sing, "What's New, Pussycat?"

We reached Kaunakakai and Johnny took the main drag. We spewed a cloud of black smoke that drifted away from the car and hovered in the middle of the street like a ghost. Johnny pulled alongside the pool room. The storefront was plate glass and I could see men inside crowding a table. One held a pool stick over his shoulder like a rifle.

Johnny turned off the engine pointed at the glove compartment. I pressed the button and the compartment popped open. Inside was the Valiant's manual, keys, plastic bags and a butterfly knife. The knife's handle reminded me of the leopard-like skin of a moray eel. It was beautiful. I handed him the knife and he slid it in his pants' pocket.

"Five minute," Johnny said.

"Can I go?" I asked.

"No boys."

"Please?"

I watched him walk in. There were two pool tables and one was empty. Four locals were shooting at one table. He approached them and talked to the biggest man. Johnny put one hand in the pocket with the knife. He took his hand out when the biggest man started laughing. The man patted him on the shoulder and all the men laughed. Johnny returned to the car.

"What was that?" I asked.

He started up the Valiant. "Cock fight."

We cruised the main drag and stopped for an old Japanese lady crossing the street near Hop Inn Restaurant.

"Mamma san," Johnny called from his window, "I love you so."

When the lady reached the curb, she turned and gave us the finger.

We drove west of Kaunakakai. Johnny took out the paper with directions and stuck it against the windshield. On the makai side of the road, the sun filtered through the maze of coconut trees King Kamehameha IV had planted on his first visit to Moloka'i. He was the same king who'd watched my great grandmother dance the hula at Iolani Palace.

Two miles beyond The Church of Latter-day Saints, we turned off the highway onto a gravel road. The tires churned the gravel. There was a white sign with black letters saying, KAPU: PRIVATE PROPERTY, but we kept going and followed the road up a hill. I heard chickens squawking and saw a pink house. The road ended and Johnny parked next to the coops. Each coop had two levels and was enclosed by chicken wire. Hens roosted inside. Leaning against one of the coops were white garbage bags stuffed with chicken manure.

Johnny got out and opened the Valiant's trunk. He moved a suji fishnet to one side. A rooster chased a loose hen across the dirt toward the pink house. I looked down on the highway?most of the cars and trucks were heading for the airport. A girl came out of the house. She was Filipina and about my age. She wore a purple muumuu and her hair was cut short.

"Missus Daniels send you?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Twenty bags."

"Whea Papa?" Johnny asked.

"Town side."

We started loading the bags into the trunk. The girl crossed her arms and watched us load. It didn't smell as bad as horse manure. It was almost sweet. Occasionally, I stole glances at the girl.

Before we finished, Johnny took his comb out of his back pocket and ran it through his hair. He started flirting. "You alone?" he asked the girl. "You lonely?" She said nothing. He tried Tagalog and she glared. He pulled out his wallet and showed her the ten dollar bill.

"Like haole boy?" She shook her head and returned to the house.

I lifted the last bag in.

"Heartbreaka," Johnny said.

On the ride home, the scent of manure filled the Valiant. I couldn't smell the Vitalis. Johnny let me play the radio. He told me the men in the pool room hired him to tie razors to the roosters and to referee the matches. They had to keep changing locations so the police wouldn't catch on. He said the best birds came from Louisiana because they'd been bred to fight to the death.

"Get girlfriend in Honolulu?" Johnny asked.

The question caught me by surprise. It was a question even my father hadn't asked. I looked up at the clouds hugging the Seven Sisters Mountains and the faces of girls drifted by, the ones I'd danced with at Punahou's eighth grade canteen. "Sort of," I said.

"Haole girl?"

"Yeah."

Johnny nodded. "Soon you marry, make babies."

I didn't know how I was going to marry and make babies if I wasn't even going steady. I was just dancing and if you touched it was only by accident. But it was fun imagining what might happen, and I took turns marrying one girl after another.

"Were you ever married?" I asked.

"One time close," he said, "but plenny pilikia."

We hit the flat stretch that ran through the marshes and I stuck out my hand. "It's cooling off," I said. Johnny spit out the window. I turned up the volume and we listened to Diana Ross sing "Love Child." I asked for advice about fishing for papio and Johnny turned the radio off.

"Save battery," he said.

After the marshes, we drove along the green pastures of Kamalo Ranch. Cows grazed behind the wire. Johnny and I shared a silence that reminded me of church. He gripped the wheel with both hands and stared at the road as if caught in a trance, as though his memories of the picture bride had crept up and overtaken him.

I could see fence posts moving through his eyes.

© Kirby Wright